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Coming Of Age By Margaret Mead

Decent Essays

Through Margaret Mead’s ethnography, in the book Coming of Age in Samoa, we learn about the lives of women in Samoan culture. Young girls of Samoan culture have very little freedom in the beginning of their lives. Girls are expected to take care of the infants in their families until there is a younger and more capable girl that can provide care. Taking care of the babies in the family is a Samoan girl’s main responsibility as a child. The author further explains, “She also develops a number of simple techniques. She learns to weave firm square balls from palm leaves, to make pin-wheels of palm leaves or Frangipani blossoms…But in the case of the little girls all of these tasks are merely supplementary to the main business of baby-tending” (Mead 20). At a young age women are expected to attain skills in certain household tasks that help provide towards their Samoan families.
Weaving is a household task that a Samoan girl is required to learn and become very skilled at. She learns different techniques and styles of weaving which help Samoan families throughout their everyday duties. Usually the older women of the household teach the younger girls how to weave. When a girl is 13 or 14 she is expected to weave a ‘fine mat.’ “The fine mat represents the high point of Samoan weaving virtuosity” (Mead 24). This ‘fine mat’ takes about 1 to 2 years to complete. Often these ‘fine mats’ are not finished until a girl is about 19 or 20 years of age. It is considered “a

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